Audio Column by Sukey Howard

When Ann Brashares’ beloved, best-selling Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series ended, Tibby, Lena, Bee and Carmen were 19 years old. Now, 10 years later, they’re back in Sisterhood Everlasting, read with the right inflection and timbre by Angela Goethals. The fab four— out of college, out of the YA genre, into adulthood with all its angst and ambiguities—still have...

Whodunit Column by Bruce Tierney

On my blog, Mysterious Orientations, I recently went on at some length about the primer-gray 1969 Plymouth Roadrunner driven by Andrew Vachss’ legendary character, Burke. Not long after, the author’s publicist, Lou Bank of the marketing firm Twelve Angry Pitbulls, emailed me to say, “Andrew Vachss loves your write-up of Burke’s car,” and asked to include it on...

Whodunit Column by Bruce Tierney

This summer brings many compelling new books for mystery readers, and A Question of Belief, Donna Leon's latest Commissario Guido Brunetti novel, is at the front of the pack. Regular readers may remember that I have been singing the praises of European mysteries for some time now, and Donna Leon’s books are in the vanguard of that august group. As A Question of Belief opens, Venice is in...

Whodunit Column by Bruce Tierney

It shouldn't have even been Deputy Brynn McKenzie's call. She was off - duty, sitting down to supper, when she received notification of an aborted 911 call from remote Lake Mondac, deep in the Wisconsin wilderness. No big deal, probably; all in all, it would seem to be a fairly innocuous beginning to Jeffery Deaver's newest thriller, The Bodies Left Behind. However, the lakeside...

Whodunit Column by Bruce Tierney

British author Magdalen Nabb's 14th mystery, Vita Nuova, features beleaguered Florentine Carabinieri Marshal Salva Guarnaccia in what may be the author's cleverest and most convoluted police procedural yet. Guarnaccia is summoned to the site of a brutal murder. A young woman has been killed in her bedroom, finished off with a single shot to the back of the head. Incredibly, although...

Whodunit Column by Bruce Tierney

Quadriplegic detective Lincoln Rhyme returns in Jeffery Deaver's The Twelfth Card. You may remember Rhyme from The Bone Collector (either the book or the movie starring Denzel Washington). This time out, Rhyme must look into the case of Geneva Settle, a Harlem high-school girl who survived a rape/murder attempt while doing research at a library. It seems there may be some connection between...

Garden of evil

One month before the 9/11 terrorist attacks reduced the World Trade Center to rubble, Jeffery Deaver was having lunch at Windows on the World, catching up on Big Apple gossip with the chef and waitresses. The 107th-floor eatery had once been Deaver's hangout during the years he worked nearby as a Wall Street civil attorney. Since leaving the...

Audio Column by Sukey Howard

That's the name the NYPD has given the "unsub" who's leaving a trail of ghastly murders as he moves about the city and leaving tantalizing bits of evidence that showcase his skill as an illusionist. To find this now-you-see-him-now-you-don't killer, the police bring in Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs, the crime-busting duo who have starred in many of Jeffrey Deaver's bestsellers. And in his...

Take a ride with the devil himself

The Digger looks like you, the Digger looks like me. He walks down the wintry streets the way anybody would, shoulders drawn together against the damp December air . . . He's not tall and not short, he's not heavy and not thin . . . If you glanced at his eyes you wouldn't notice the shape or the color but only that they don't seem quite human,...